“Shit, I’ve got too many muscles to be bending this way,” Jayden grumbled. “I’m going to damage something important down here.”
Max snorted. “You don’t use it anyway.”
The other guys laughed, including Xander. But if they were like him, it was probably more to cover up the fact that they were having problems with bound warrior. It was like being a pretzel. The next pose was even worse. Something about a crow or a chicken. Either way, yoga was tougher than he’d thought. Props to whoever did it regularly because he was sweating like crazy.
He wasn’t the only one. Every guy on the team was grunting and swearing as Khaki led them through moves that stretched parts most of them hadn’t even known existed. Even she was sweating.
That was when he noticed something that almost knocked him out of his twisted triangle pose—a scent so strong he had to bite down on his tongue to keep from growling.Whatthehell?
Xander took a deep breath, trying to identify where it was coming from. When he did, he almost howled. That delectable scent hitting him so hard was coming from none other than Khaki’s glistening, sweat-slicked body. He was downwind of her, so as she led them from twisted triangle into a straight-legged hamstring stretch, the aroma kept getting stronger and stronger. She always smelled good, but for some reason, today her scent was even more powerful than normal.
Stopping his hard-on from uncomfortably filling his shorts wasn’t even an option. But this was more than simply an arousing scent. It was as if he’d been struck by lightning. Every cell in his body was tingling and alive. If his heart had stopped beating right at that moment, he wouldn’t have been surprised. But as agonizing as it was to stand there and inhale Khaki’s pheromones without pouncing on her, the thought of walking away was too painful to even consider.
He tore his gaze from Khaki and looked around, trying to see how everyone else was dealing with this mind-numbing sensory assault. But other than some swearing and complaining about how long Khaki was keeping them in this last pose, it didn’t seem like any of the guys noticed the scent rolling off her like a tidal wave.
How was that possible? It was the most amazing thing he’d ever smelled in his life. There was no way the other guys couldn’t smell it.
But obviously they didn’t or they’d have gone nuts. What the hell was happening to him?
Then, as he knelt there trying hard to breathe through his mouth and not his nose, the answer came to him. There could be only one reason he was affected by Khaki’s scent like this. And that one reason scared the hell out of him.
Khaki Blake must beTheOne—capitalT, capitalO—for him. If Xander hadn’t been kneeling right then, he would have fallen over.
As he watched Khaki flexing and twisting in mind-boggling grace, he realized that every single legend aboutTheOnewas true. He may have found his soul mate.
But then a far more painful truth hit him. While he might have found his soul mate, she was one of his squad members. She’d also just gotten out of a crappy workplace romance that had blown up in her face and driven her out of her last job.
He wasn’t too intoxicated by her pheromones to know what both of those things meant. Khaki, and all that could be, was out of his reach.
Suddenly, that amazing scent of hers didn’t seem so sweet. In fact, it seemed more like a kick in the balls.
* * *
Khaki had no idea what she’d done during PT to piss off Xander, but when the rest of the squad headed downrange to get in some target practice, he’d announced he was staying in the admin office to write some reports. But from the way he’d avoided her gaze as he said it, she knew he was lying. Clearly, he didn’t want to be around her any more than he had to be.
She tried to forget about Xander and his issues as she walked down to the shooting range with the guys. She laughed with them, even when they called her “yoga wolf” and ribbed her about this morning’s PT session. She knew their teasing was just good-natured fun. She was part of the Pack now. The change from the previous day was subtle, but she could feel it. Between yesterday and today, they had become a family. It was nice to be part of something so special.
But no matter how much she laughed and joked with her teammates or how secure she felt with her new place within the Pack, she still wrestled with her relationship with Xander. The sense of disappointment welling up inside her when he stayed in the admin building instead of joining them was overwhelming. The worst part was she didn’t even understand why it bothered her so much. She’d known she wasn’t Xander’s favorite person since day one. Heck, she’d said as much to Mac last night. But after how well her werewolf lesson at his place had gone, not to mention the way she’d handled herself yesterday during the bank robbery, she’d thought she and Xander were in a good place.
Obviously, she’d been wrong.
She knew it was juvenile to get caught up in trying to understand Xander and whatever problem he had with her, but it was hard to pretend it didn’t matter when he acted like he’d rather be flossing his teeth with barbwire than spend even five minutes in her company. It physically made her chest hurt if she thought about it too much. It was like she’d lost something she’d never even had.
Khaki wished she could talk to another female werewolf about it. Mac was great, but there was stuff going on that Mac couldn’t understand or explain. Khaki knew in her gut that her werewolf nature had something to do with these feelings she was having. This wasn’t just a matter of being attracted to Xander. She’d been attracted to men before enough to know that what she felt now wasn’t normal. No man had ever taken hold of her soul the way Xander had. Even now as she was busy loading magazines for her M4, her head was somewhere else—like remembering how good Xander had smelled this morning during PT. The urge to walk over in the middle of the workout and rub her body up against his had been almost impossible to resist. If the other guys hadn’t been there, she probably would have done it—then thrown him down on his yoga mat and jumped him.
The image made her fingers tingle and her gums throb. She knew from last night what that meant and she quickly glanced at her fingertips to see if her claws were out. They weren’t, which meant her fangs weren’t either. But she carefully ran her tongue over her teeth just to check. How the hell would she have explained that, by saying loading 5.56 mm magazines got her excited?
What was wrong with her? How could thinking about Xander make her want to shift when she didn’t even know how to do it yet?
* * *
Khaki was on her fourth magazine when Trevor’s cell phone rang. Just when she’d finally gotten Xander out of her head and was able to think about something other than her squad leader.
Trevor had been putting them through a wounded-dominant-arm scenario with their M4s, making them go through the process of shooting, clearing a jammed weapon, and reloading—all with their nonshooting hand. Doing those things with an M4 was tough enough with both hands. With just her left, it was challenging as hell. Which was why it had required all her attention.
“We’ve got an incident,” Trevor said as he hung up.
Khaki grabbed her M4 and followed the guys, jogging to keep up with their long strides. She got to the admin building just in time to hear Xander asking if Gage was sure he wanted to do this.
